Branded Tees at Center of Beer Feud

Craft beer maker Arrogant Brewing is cleverly promoting its bad boy image and delivering an upper cut to competitors it calls “sellouts” with a new antagonistic promotional campaign that puts branded T-shirts in the spotlight.

With its “Unworthy Beer T-Shirt Amnesty Month” campaign, the Arrogant Brewing team is inviting suds lovers to send them the T-shirts of beer brands that were once independent breweries but have since sold to become part of global beer conglomerates.

Based in Escondido, CA, Arrogant Brewing says it will then either donate the T-shirts to charity or mail them in a show of cheekiness to corporate beer behemoths Heineken International or AB InBev.

In addition, Arrogant Brewing is offering to sell consumers who mail in “sellout” brand shirts an Arrogant Brewing T-Shirt for the reduced cost of $15 – a charge that includes shipping and handling.

To encourage participation, Arrogant Brewing stays in tough-guy character with its marketing of the campaign. Its website thus sets the stage for Unworthy Beer T-Shirt Amnesty Month: “Face it, there are brands out there you used to love. They meant something to you, and you thought they stood for something. And then the rug was pulled out from under you, all for a stinkin’ big fat check. What did you get for your fandom? Jack. And now wearing that sellout brand’s T-shirt doesn’t feel quite so cool does it? Of course not. They’re sellouts. That’s simple math.”

While some will object to the thrust and tone of Arrogant Brewing’s campaign, there’s no denying that it is a potentially powerful marketing initiative. It taps into the ethos of the brand’s core audience, which values drinking the American-made beers of independently owned U.S. breweries; paints competitors in a light that undercuts their credibility with that core audience; strongly promotes its own brand image; and helps stoke sales of its T-shirts.

Unworthy Beer T-Shirt Amnesty Month is the next generation of Arrogant Brewing’s “Fizzy Yellow Beer T-Shirt Amnesty Program.” That “program allowed those that had recently converted to real beer to turn in their old corporate fizzy yellow beer T-shirts,” Arrogant Brewing says.

Despite all the chirping about sellouts, it should be noted that Stone Brewing, Arrogant Brewing’s parent company, appears to have some outside capital backing itself. “In 2016, they accepted a $90 million investment from VMG, a venture capital firm that specializes in food and drink investments, although it would seem this minority ownership doesn’t currently jeopardize their ability to be labeled as ‘craft’ beer by the Brewers Association,” Paste reports.

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